Corrupt police struggle to protect holidaymakers in the face of beach robberies, scams and pick-pockets.

And those smiling picture postcards of elephant rides and tiger cuddles mask a very real risk that the enslaved animal will go rogue and attack.

Daily Star Online is today lifting the lid on the notorious Land of Smiles after a wave of recent tragedies on its shores.

An estimated 900,000 Brits travel to the south-east Asian nation every year despite it being the Foreign Office’s third-biggest international headache.

The Government had to give "consular assistance" 1,164 times in 2013/14 after 362 people died, 267 were hospitalised and 11 were raped.

REUTERS

HELD: Cambodian fishermen charged over the deaths of French tourists were forced to re-enact

That’s more Brit deaths than in USA, France and Germany.

Those who flocked to the sunshine meccca haven't held back on Tripadvisor.

One described its Bang Saen Beach as being dominated by "filthy water, crowded, overrun by touts, trash everywhere."

Another gave a damning review of a hotel in popular Koh Samui, writing: "After spending the last three months travelling in SE Asia, this is the first and only place where I have felt genuinely concerned about my safety! We were robbed of £200."

Here's our list of five reasons as to why you should think twice before jetting off to Thailand this year.

GETTY/PA

DARK: Zaw Lin and Win Zaw were sentenced over the deaths of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller

“Aesthetic beauty can lure you into a very dangerous trap”

Sister of murdered Hannah Witheridge

1. Attacks on tourists

Four French tourists were reportedly attacked with knives and sticks and the group's two women raped as recently as Saturday night.

Police claim five Cambodians sailors have already confessed after the horror ambush in Koh Kut in eastern Thailand.

The Wildlife Friends Foundation of Thailand claim that the country's 80 elephant camps – which together hold 2,800 elephants – were not properly regulated.

Meanwhile, a tiger – at Tiger Kingdom in Phuket – bit a chunk out of the leg of Australian tourist Paul Goudie in 2014.

FACEBOOK/GETTY

HORROR: Gareth Crowe was trampled and gouged by an elephant in paradise island Koh Samui

4. Hellish prisons

Drugs are despised by authorities in Thailand, and individuals found producing, importing or exporting narcotics can be jailed for life or given the death sentence.

Australian Warren Fellows was given life in 1978 for heroin trafficking and tells stories of cockroach-infested prison cells and murders in his book, The Damage Done: Twelve Years Of Hell In A Bangkok Prison

5. Scams and pick pockets

To name a couple, tourists are charged hundreds of pounds if a rental moped is the least bit scratched and can awake on a night bus or train to find valuables stolen.

Petty scams that involve taxi drivers giving lost tourists miss-information, to instead take them to their mate's shop, cafe or gambling den, run riot in capital Bangkok.